Just a Boroughs Girl - Part 2

By Hair Hardwick

And now, as requested, a few memories I have of my life throughout the years.

Heathville and things I recall from that time, or perhaps have been told as I grew, and to be honest I picture some of it just as it was but other things are a little vague.

There one of our neighbours had rabbits and I would always go walk about with no one really worrying because they knew where to find me, generally in his garden sat on my backside, with a rabbit too big for me to hold onto, clutching it like mad while I sat on the ground, winter or summer.

My father grew Gladiolus and I do remember being shown how to pick tiny heads from some other plants he had so that the cluster around them had more room to grow.

Also there was a dolls house my father made for me out of an old corner cupboard, and my mother making me a family for it out of dolly pegs.

My first dog, though more a family pet, who had to be put down due to boys playing on Kingsheath green hitting her over the head with a cricket bat, injuring her badly.

My first day at school, which was at the time was Spencer infants. On that first day at playtime I was stung by a bee and so went looking for my sister who was in the juniors. There when I got into the hall, via the playground gate that split the school areas, I came slap bang upon the head that went raving mad at me. She did not check the finger I had clutched in the other hand but sent me packing back through the gate and into the other playground, telling me I should go back inside, my tears meant nothing to her. I didn’t. If I couldn’t have my sister I was going home to show my mum. I walked, age just over four, from that school right along past the park, through Dallington, over the road and up the hill into Heathville to get home.

Home in Dallington

Needless to say my mother was livid about my walking the streets like that and no one at the school even knowing I had gone. She removed the bee stuck to my finger where I had squashed it with my other hand, and treated my finger; I still have a tiny bump on that finger today. Then I was left with a neighbour and I do not know what happened but I do know the following day I started at Kingsheath infants where I remained until we moved to Herbert Street.

Herbert Street is clearer in my mind.

Herbert Street 1963 

Herbert Street demolition

I sat one day on the kerb just outside our house and a boy from next door I think, sat next to me, he was, (sorry this is not nice but is relevant,) picking his nose, rolling what he got into a ball and flicking it here and there. My mother came out to find him doing that clipped him around the ear and sent me packing indoors. When she came in I was stripped, dragged down into the cellar kitchen and stood shivering while she filled the sink with warm water. Next thing I knew she had pored vinegar in to, telling me off for sitting with him and dousing my head and all of the rest of me in the smelly water she sat me in she ended by saying ‘I aim to see you don’t get his fleas my girl and it serves you right if you get cold or it stings.’ Funny thing was mum never spoke to us like she did to folks in the area. She was really quite a lady in her speech and yet just seemed to slip from one mode to another with ease.

She was right though, he had been picking those out and showing me them before hand.

Green Dragon Bearward Street

Memories of sitting on the steps of the Green Dragon and other pubs on the Mayor Hold are quite clear to me. It was great for me as I was always given a penny or two from the men going in and coming out. Can you imagine letting your children do that today?

I recall refusing to sit back down next to a boy again, in what was my new school Spring Lane, because he had wet himself and my mum had instilled in me that if I wet myself I would stink. In my head it meant he would even if he had been washed down since.

I also have fond memories of a dinner lady at the school, she was my cousin but being older and married, I always was told she was my auntie and so called her that. She spoiled me, knowing that mum never had much she always gave me a bit extra, and coaxed me to eat a little of what I didn’t like to get extra of things I did. I wish I could recall her name but I am sorry I don’t at this time.

Spring Lane School

Once in the juniors we all had to write a play and they were to be looked at by the headmaster who was Mr Griffiths. He was going to give a prize to the best one chosen. It was mine and I received a big bar of chocolate I was so proud to take home to mum. I remember it was the first time she said I never had to share it, but it was so big I did anyway. I was prouder when my play was used as it was for the school. I had to go and tell people where to stand and how to do things. Ha ha I loved that.

I remember my sister attended a church and took me to Sunday school there. I had to learn a verse of a hymn and if did I would get a small bar of chocolate. I remembered it all, the whole thing and got my chocolate plus a pat on the head which I recall annoyed me, done by the minister there. I was a big girl and you did that to little kids not big girls like me. Funny how I remember that so clearly, and yet question sometimes if I dreamt it.

One thing always makes me smile though when I think of it, though it wasn’t very nice for one of my sisters.

While there our toilet was a small brick built shed at the top of the garden away from the house, we hated it, it was scary and at night we used pots indoors which had to be emptied and washed every morning. But you see there were many rats and mice in that area where houses were being knocked down around us, so it was not safe or nice to go out there at night really. There was also no light.

Outside the back door mum kept a tin bucket with water in it. It was always kept full in case anyone was in a hurry; of you know what I mean. We had to take it with us and use it to flush the toilet when we had done. Then we had to fill it afterwards and put it back ready for the next time.

One day my sister went up the garden in the day time, bucket in hand, nothing to be ashamed of as everyone in our street had to do that. She went, used the loo and as she stood up and wiped herself she looked behind her and saw, to her horror, she had been right on the head of a rat that was in the loo. No! She did not stay to flush the loo. She came hurrying down the path, screaming her head off and trying to run and pull her draws up at the same time, so was almost falling over with every step she took. She screamed so loud half the street heard her as well as us, and everyone rushed to their back room windows which over looked the gardens. She got teased a lot about that time I tell you. She was about 15 then and had just started work I think.

Does anyone recall the toilets that used to be next door to the co-op on the mayorhold I wonder? I ask as it was there my sister used the loo from that day on.

I did learn one thing in that house, and that was when mum said something more than once she meant it. I found that out when she told me to see the coal in and told me several times before she went out; to make sure the door between the cellar and the kitchen was tightly closed. Oops. What a mistake NOT doing that was! It resulted in me, all alone and aged about nine, having to wash the whole kitchen down dishes, pots, pans, the lot, before mum got home. No I never managed it and she was so mad she made me finish it as well. If you have no idea what a mess coal dust can make you would not understand how bad it was after three bags of loose coal were dropped from above. Let’s just say it resembled smoke clouds only trapped inside the walls of the house and settling in black thick dust on everything.

Abington.

Once there I felt we now lived in a posh house, we had a bathroom downstairs with a proper bath and running water. I think actually there may have been one at Heathville but I am not sure. For me my clear memories are of that old tin bath at Herbert Street that I so hated and we had to bathe in, taking it in turns to use it took too much to fill each time and water had to be carried up and down a flight of stairs to and from the kitchen.

Upstairs we had an indoor toilet, instead of the one up the garden at our old house.

When my time at the junior school was over I quite understood that mum and dad could not afford to buy me a new school uniform. I wasn’t worried I was used to making do, but I did want at least one new blouse, and mum promised me I would have two. I never knew how dire a state money and funds were at that time so I did not understand why she did what she did for a long while.

Mum & me in Abington

One day I came home from junior school to find two pure white crispy new blouses on hangers hanging on the wall. I was thrilled.

Later when I was in bed, I heard voices in the room below; one was my cousin who had lived in the cul-de-sac down the road from us. I heard her say, ‘well did she like them Eva?’ I heard my mother reply, ‘shhhh! she’ll hear you, she doesn’t know they were Marie’s and I had them from you she thinks they are new, and I don’t want her to know do you hear me?’

The following day I went to school wearing a blouse from the second hand pile I had in my room, I had no intention of putting on one of those hanging up. Father saw I did wear them, of course, and I got over it given time. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really did though as it’s still such a vivid memory.

At school also on the first day, I met a girl who became my close friend. We never knew it then but we would become life long friends and I mean more or less for all of it, because you see there was something we never knew at the time.

One day she was in my home and my mum asked her if she was related to someone. She was, and mum and dad started laughing and pointing to one and then the other of us. Eventually it all came out. It turned out we had played in as babies in our prams or on the grass in the gardens of the pub in Dallington village.

Her grandfather was my godfather and he and dad use to take us for walks and met there for a pint, or two, or three.

We are still friends and she lives here in Northampton too.

Before I left school I got a bit of a shock. You see I was called to the heads office and wondered what I had done wrong that old Mother Malin’s, as we called her back then, wanted me for. It turned out to my utter surprise she wanted to try and talk thick me into staying on. I wasn’t any good at anything I thought, but she and some of the teachers obviously thought differently.

They wanted me to take art, in particular, studying design, and also typing. The second I saw as a real joke as I had only had one lesson at that school, how could I have had more if I wanted them when there had only been one woman there who taught it and after just two days she left and was not replaced, I had one morning’s lesson with her and that was it. Oddly enough I taught myself to type on a computer more or less as soon as I got one.

My dyslexia and word displacement was never picked up on at school as back then it was not recognised by the medical profession. I found out I had it some years later, when my son began school and I filled in the forms needed to hand over to register him there. I have had to work at overcoming the problem and still misspell when in a hurry and even other times as some of my comments in here prove I am sure.

I refused them as I had already set up the first job I was going to, and felt my mother needed my board to be paid. So l left school and as it turned out it was a good job I did even if that first job only lasted a few weeks.

Lost orders saw to that and it was a case of first in first out. Just my luck, mind you I did well out of it with a month’s pay given me. I think they felt guilty as I had so looked forward to the job and was hard worker from that very first day, I am proud to say.

I found work straight away. Hated the new job and left again the same day, too clicky, as we used to say back then, though I think it’s still said today too.

So I loved the job at College warehouse in College Road, where I had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the factory floors. That was just more or less opposite the fish and chip shop there, maybe a slightly lower down than that. I think it’s still a painted black door on that entrance today. There I sewed buttons onto police hats, not the helmets but the officer’s hats and peak caps. And believe it or not there is an art to that, for those buttons must have no chance of falling off for quite some time. I learned how and still tend to put many buttons on things in the same way today.

I was working there and only fifteen when I discovered I was pregnant, seven months pregnant!

Then began another part of my life, for I had responsibilities and therefore had to grow up, and fast.